AMD and IIT-B join hands to support semiconductor startups in India

Global chip giant AMD on Monday announced a partnership with the Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE), an incubator at IIT Bombay, under which the company will provide grants to IIT Bombay-incubated startups working on the development of energy-efficient Spiking Neural Network (SNN) chips.

The startups will work on devising ways to significantly reduce the energy consumption utilised by conventional neural networks, said the company.

Under the collaboration, Numelo Technologies was given the first grant for developing SNN chips using ultralow power quantum tunnelling on silicon on insulator (SOI) technology.

Speaking about the initiative, Jaya Jagadish, country head, AMD India, said, “At AMD, our goal is to reduce energy costs and increase efficiency across all our product lines. We aim to deliver a 30x improvement in energy efficiency for AMD processors and accelerators powering high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) training by 2025. This means we are increasing the energy efficiency of compute nodes at a rate that is significantly faster than the aggregate industry-wide improvement made during the last five years. We continuously work with industry bodies and academia to support initiatives that help drive innovation in this field.”

This partnership is part of AMD’s corporate social responsibility initiative, said the company.

“As India looks to execute a comprehensive semiconductor strategy, it is important to nurture, build, and grow startups in this space. As design cycles are long and the cost of entry high in the semiconductor design area, it is SINE's endeavour to foster and create strong, product-focused, cutting-edge semiconductor design startups by addressing gaps in the industry,” said Shaji Varghese, chief executive officer, SINE-IIT Bombay.